Abstract

The article concerns on the topic of vegetarianism in the context of the importance of animal sacrifice in ancient Greece and Rome. In the first part the author analyses the function of animal sacrifice in ancient world, focusing on the religious and social meaning of eating the meat offered to gods on an altar. In the second part she presents the figures of vegetarians, who had to face the problem of obligatory character of sacrifice. The author focuses especially on the examples of inconsistency between their postulates and the real practice, and inquires its motifs. At the ending she presents the changes of the habit of animal sacrifice and the attitudes toward animals with the development of Christianity at the final period of antiquity.